AUTHOR GUEST POST: JAYNE BAMBER, THE GUARDIAN GAMBIT

 

Hello, Readers! I am delighted to share my new release, The Guardian Gambit, a mash-up of Pride & Prejudice + Emma that is inspired by The Parent Trap – it’s a wild ride!

The story begins with Elizabeth Bennet and Jane Fairfax discovering they are identical twins when they meet for the first time just before their 21^st birthday. With the encouragement of their intrigue-loving aunt – Mr. Gardiner’s widow, now known as Lady Gresham – the twins exchange places and scheme to reunite their parents, Elizabeth’s “guardian” Mr. Bennet and Jane’s “aunt” Miss Bates.

NEW RELEASE! SOMETHING ABOUT LIZZY BY ROBIN ELIZABETH KOBAYASHI

 

 

Thank you, Maria Grazia, for inviting me to guest blog today. For many years I’ve wondered what it would be like to be friends with the lively, witty, intelligent Elizabeth Bennet of Pride and Prejudice, even after her marriage to Mr. Darcy, when she is a mother and the mistress of Pemberley. We know from Jane Austen’s novels and letters just how challenging and frustrating it was to be woman in a man’s world during the nineteenth century. My new novella, Something About Lizzy: Family Secrets Post-Pride and Prejudice, is my ode to Elizabeth Darcy née Bennet—her emotional journey as a married woman, her love and relationships and secrets.

NEW RELEASE! AMANDA KAI, MISS BINGLEY AND THE BARON: AUTHOR GUEST POST, EXCERPT AND GIVEAWAY

 

Dear readers and Jane Austen aficionados,

We're thrilled to have the talented author Amanda Kai with us today to celebrate the release of her latest literary delight, "Miss Bingley and the Baron." As we open the pages of her enchanting story, we're transported to the world of Regency romance, where love blossoms under the veil of disguise and false pretenses.

HOW JANE AUSTEN PERSEVERED

 

Jane Austen's House - Chawton 

Recently, I have faced some huge challenges in my life and have had many obstacles to overcome. My experiences have made me think of the challenges Jane Austen faced and how she overcame them. Jane did not always have an easy life. An example of this is the decision by her parents in 1801 for Jane’s father, a vicar, to retire from Steventon in Hampshire and, with his wife and their two daughters, move to Bath. Neither Jane nor her elder sister Cassandra were consulted.

TOMI TABB, THE GREAT AUSTEN ADVENTURE

 

Thank you so much to Maria Grazia for allowing me the opportunity to stop by and say ‘hello’ to you all. My name is Tomi and I am an author who writes sweet, clean romance novels.

Aside from being an author, I’m also an avid reader of Regency and JA inspired stories.

When I sat down to write my latest novel, “The Great Austen Adventure,” I thought it would be fun to explore the types of fans we have in JA fandom. Little did I know that this story would take on a mind of its own.

AUTHOR GUEST POST & EXCERPT: AMANDA KAI, A FAVORABLE IMPRESSION

Hi Maria Grazia, thanks so much for having me back at My Jane Austen Book Club to help me celebrate the release of A Favorable Impression!

This is the second book in my series of Regency-era standalones, each featuring a different path to Happily Ever After for Darcy and Elizabeth. I guess you could say that each book takes place in a different “universe”, with all the same characters appearing, but with varying circumstances, which makes for a unique story in each, even though they are all patterned after Pride and Prejudice, and they all arrive at the same destination in the end. I suppose that is why we love Pride and Prejudice variations so much though, right? 

A NEW NOVEL BY JAYNE BAMBER: HANDSOME, CLEVER AND RICH

 

It’s great to be back at My Jane Austen Book Club! Today I am here to share another excerpt of my new release, Handsome, Clever, & Rich, which is now available on Kindle Unlimited.

 

This Pride & Prejudice variation is a crossover with another of my favorites, Emma, and the titular heroine plays an important role in the story. While Emma’s love story is a gradual progression, Elizabeth’s path to romance is much rockier in this story. This retelling has styled her a Bennet by marriage rather than birth, and after a youthful elopement and brief marriage, the widow of four years has sworn never to wed again… until Elizabeth is convalescing at Netherfield and a moment of passion with Mr. Darcy leads to a compromise that jeopardizes the reputation of her Bennet relations.

THE SAILOR'S REST, THE NAVAL ADVENTURE JANE AUSTEN MIGHT HAVE WRITTEN. GUEST POST & GIVEAWAY.

 

The Naval Adventure Jane Austen Might Have Written

 The Sailor’s Rest, the latest Austenesque novel by Don Jacobson, has been released worldwide on March 28, 2023. Published independently, this is the author’s twelfth variation using Austen’s Canon as a basis for the story. The book is a cross-over (not a mash-up) of Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion. For plot purposes, the novel (approx. 117,000 words) is set on the Persuasion timeline in 1815. However, the age and plot constructs from Pride and Prejudice have been maintained to establish context.

AMANDA KAI, NOT IN WANT OF A WIFE. AUTHOR'S GUEST POST + EXCERPT

 

Hello everyone! Let's welcome author Amanda Kai to our online Jane Austen Book Club  and let's congratulate her on the publication of her latest book, Not in Want of a Wife. Scroll down and enjoy reading. MG

AUTHOR'S GUEST POST

Thank you, Maria Grazia, I’m so excited to be here today at My Jane Austen Book Club.

My latest book, Not In Want of a Wife, was born from the thought “what if Darcy and Elizabeth decided to fake a courtship?” The fake courtship/fake dating trope is such a fun one, because you just know that the couple who is pretending to like each other are going to fall in love! I absolutely love fake dating/fake courtship tropes, so it was really fun to put Darcy and Lizzy into this situation. Instead of getting off on the wrong foot at the Meryton Assembly, Darcy and Elizabeth strike up a secret partnership to make it look like they are courting one another.

WHAT IS IT ABOUT PERIOD DRAMA? COUNTING DOWN TO THE NEW PERSUASION

 

(by guest blogger Lizzie Nelson)

Along with everybody else, I have been counting the days until the new Persuasion is released. Good or bad, I will lap it up.

I often wonder what it is about period dramas that captivate me so. Why are they so incredibly fulfilling? At 56, I am past the age of seeing myself as a Jane Austen heroine; unaware of her compelling yet understated beauty, quick witted, independent,resigned to spinsterhood and then finding love.I am married and jolly content, I am in my own happy ending and have not the slightest yearning for excitement and romance… I think.

BLOG TOUR: LUCY KNIGHT, HOW I CAME TO WRITE MARIA BERTRAM'S DAUGHTER

 

Thank you, Maria Grazia, for hosting me on my blog tour. I thought your readers might be interested to know how I came to write Maria Bertram’s Daughter as I understand that Mansfield Park sequels are unusual. Personally, it is one of my favourites. There is so much symbolism in it, and it is so rich in characters, mostly unpleasant. My other favourite is Sense and Sensibility because that, too, is full of monsters. I used to read Jane Austen for the romance, but now I read her mostly for the laughs, which come mainly thanks to the hypocrisy and unintentional self-revelation of the secondary characters.

AN AFFECTIONATE HEART BLOG TOUR: AUTHOR GUEST POST & GIVEAWAY

 

Thanks for welcoming back to My Jane Austen Book Club to talk about An Affectionate Heart!

Spinster. Ape leader. Old maid. These are Georgian-era words that could have been applied to women like Miss Bates, Elizabeth Elliot, Charlotte Lucas, and the Parker sisters. The insulting idea of an older, unmarried woman surrounded by cats isn’t a new one. Although she’s only 21, Elizabeth Bennet in An Affectionate Heart is another poor, unmarried woman with little agency over her own life.

As Emma Woodhouse tells us, if you’re an heiress it’s not so bad to be single, but if you’re poor like Miss Bates you practically deserve to be ridiculed. There was intense social prejudice against unmarried women and few respectable means of employment for the women of this class. Aside from all the typical reasons to marry, many women felt a duty to their families to marry to relieve them of the burden of providing for them.

BETHANY DELLEMAN PRESENTS HER PRIDEFUL & PERSUADED: WHO CAN CAROLINE BINGLEY MARRY?

 

In my novel, Prideful & Persuaded, Caroline Bingley meets three Austen men in Bath: Sir Walter Elliot (Persuasion), Tom Bertram (Mansfield Park), and Frederick Tilney (Northanger Abbey). Two of these men are current or future baronets and all three have very wealthy estates. Is it reasonable for a lady like Caroline to think that men of this level of wealth and rank would marry her? If we set aside whether Darcy likes Caroline or not, did she have a chance with him in Pride & Prejudice? I will explore these questions using evidence from Jane Austen’s works. 

DEMI MONDE, KIDNAPPED AND COMPROMISED: GUEST POST AND GIVEAWAY

 

Available on Kindle December 26th, 2021

Hello Dear Readers, my name is Demi Monde and it is a pleasure to be here at My Jane Austen Book Club to share more details about my new release, Kidnapped and Compromised. This is a steamy novella and a work of Austenesque fiction.

A HOPEFUL HOLIDAY BLOG TOUR: HEATHER MOLL'S GUEST POST & EXCERPT

 

Thanks for welcoming me back to the blog Maria Grazia! In my Pride and Prejudice novella A Hopeful Holiday, Darcy never returned to Hertfordshire, although he did send Bingley back to Jane. He felt Elizabeth would never forgive him after Lydia had to marry Wickham, and Elizabeth thinks that Darcy could never suffer to be his brother-in-law. They find themselves in Kent over Christmas where the social event of the season is Lady Catherine’s masquerade ball.

AUTHOR GUEST POST: ANNETTE PURDEY PUGH, A MURDER AT ROSINGS

 

BORROWING CHARACTERS FROM PRIDE AND PREJUDICE FOR A MYSTERY STORY

Charlotte Collins sat close to the fire in the small parlour at Hunsford Parsonage … Her cheeks were flushed from the heat and her eyes dull. ‘He was a simple clergyman. He wrote sermons and tended the garden. How could he have made an enemy?’

     This is the question which is asked by everyone when the dead body of Mr Collins if discovered in the grounds of Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s mansion, Rosings. He’s been stabbed. Those investigating, the local magistrate and village constable, quickly come to the conclusion that only one man had both motive and means to commit the murder, and that is Mr Bennet. He’s been staying at the parsonage, together with his daughter Mary, with a view to resolving the matter of the entail upon his estate. Obviously, with Mr Collins out of the picture, his future might be brighter…

THE MANY DIFFERENT INTERPRETATIONS OF MARY BENNET - KATHERINE COWLEY'S GUEST POST AND GIVEAWAY

My novel, The Secret Life of Miss MaryBennet, features Mary Bennet, the middle sister from Pride and Prejudice. In various adaptations and Austen-inspired works, there are many different interpretations of Mary Bennet. Some use her for comic relief, others soften her, and others take a more moderate or nuanced approach.

JAYNE BAMBER, FIVE DAUGHTERS OUT AT ONCE. AUTHOR GUEST POST & GIVEAWAY

 

Hello Dear Janeites, it is a pleasure to be back at My Jane Austen Book Club to kick off the blog tour of my new release, Five Daughters Out At Once.

L.L. DIAMOND, UNDOING: AUTHOR GUEST POST & EXCERPT

Thank you so much for having me! It’s been a long five-year road to publishing Undoing, so I’m so excited for everyone to finally see what I’ve been holding on to for all this time. I thought I’d share a bit of my inspiration and thought process behind Elizabeth’s husband, Thomas Osborne, Duke of Leeds. I have a small excerpt after, a letter from Elizabeth to Jane. I hope you enjoy!

In Particular Intentions, I use the Earl Fitzwilliam as a nod to the actual earldom many believe Jane Austen used to show Fitzwilliam Darcy’s ties to the nobility in Pride and Prejudice, and I had some fun in a similar way with Undoing as well.

Have you ever heard of Lady Amelia Darcy? No, she is not a character in a Jane Austen novel. She was a real woman and the only surviving child of Robert Darcy, the 4^th Earl of Holderness. Now, you are probably asking what her connection is to Undoing. Well, I will not say that is a simple answer, but I will give you the real and the fiction of Amelia Darcy.

In 1773, the real Lady Amelia Darcy married Francis Osborne, who was at that time the Marquess of Carmarthen. After Amelia’s death, Osborne became the 5^th Duke of Leeds. When I first started writing Undoing over five years ago, I called the duke in my story by a different title (that’s a story for another blog post!) and his first name was Thomas. When I began updating it, I remembered this link between a real-life Darcy and a dukedom and wanted to use that link in my story as well—a little reality mixed in with the fiction.

AUTHOR GUEST POST: BEAU NORTH ON MAKING THE COLONEL

Hello, and thanks so much for hosting me today! After nearly a decade of having this story kicking around in my head (and through countless incarnations on my Google Drive) I’m thrilled to be able to finally share ‘The Colonel’ with all of you. Some of you might be familiar with my first book, Longbourn’s Songbird, and the trials and tribulations of Will Darcy’s cousin, Richard Fitzwilliam. When I set out writing this story back in 2009, I had an idea of telling Pride and Prejudice from The Colonel’s point of view, in a more modern setting while still keeping the action at a pivotal moment in world history.

After several drafts, I put most of Fitzwilliam’s story aside in favor of getting to the juicy Darcy-and-Elizabeth story. But Richard lingered in my head. A kind-hearted rake, the archetype of men I’d been watching on AMC since I was a girl. The final product, this character I’d borrowed from my beloved Austen, had become a sort of Frankenstein of these leading men. My Richard would have the quiet intensity of Cary Grant’s TR Devlin in Notorious, his exterior cool while his eyes devoured every expression on his lady love’s face. He would have the gin-soaked humor and self-depreciating wit of Bogart’s Richard Blaine in Casablanca, and the looks and go-to-hell attitude of Gene Kelly’s Victor in Cross of Lorraine.